Catch a glimpse of my current works. A hobby to keep me sane with the demands of a homeschooling mother to 4 beautiful kids and all the stuff that goes along with it!

Enjoy and be sure to leave a comment!

Strawberry Pickin'

On Saturday, December 30th, we visited a local strawberry farm and commenced to pickin'! It was fun, except it went too fast! We filled our buckets and ate a few while picking and were ready to weigh our treasures within 15 minutes. The strawberries were abundant and we could have spent much more time, but at $3/pound and we maxed out our bucket capacity the way it was, we decided to stick with what we had.





Note to self, the strawberry festival is coming up in March. We MUST attend this year in Plant City!

My hubby is 42

We spent the day doing quiet activities. Church in the morning. Quiet lunch at the park and racing in go-karts in the afternoon...... so much for the quiet! We all had fun!!! Even Elizabeth, the youngest, she thought she was really driving the cars.

She said, "That was SO much fun, we'll have to bring daddy here again!"

Steady as she goes.....

The progress on my dad's transplant is slow, but hopeful that it will be completely successful. He has extreme faith and his spirits are good. He has good days and bad days, as far as comfort is concerned. I try to check in daily, just for a few minutes or so by telephone to let him and my mom know that we are thinking about him and continue to pray for him. According to the health professionals, it can be another 2-3 weeks of hospitalization and monitoring, if all goes well he will return home to normal activities after that. This may allow them to go back to ND for a while before winter to take care of some things there and travel back to AZ for the winter months, or maybe even some light travelling. We shall see.

My kids are enjoying their summer days, but most of them within the last week have been rainy. This brings on boredom, more television (which is not helping anything), and just plain no activity. They need to be outside more. I will see if there are some inexpensive activities they can participate in at the rec center before the school year starts. Of course, as many of you know, I homeschool them, so it doesn't matter to them when the school year officially starts.

We will be ordering our FCAT tests for 2007 here shortly. This will provide the necessary info for the school district and general recordkeeping. They did pretty well this year. Dana still struggles to get all of her studies done. We added too many electives this year I think, plus she has her responsibilities with music at the church, teaching 1 piano student (now 2), and general helpful duties around the house. Maybe this year we will concentrate on the 'core' study areas and bypass some of the electives.

David just had surgery on the 16th. This was a partial adenoid removal, tubes in his ears, sinus culture procedures. He did well. We were all home safe by 3:30 p.m. the same day for rest. His speech tends to be more nasal than it was before, which is one of the reasons we wanted to do the procedure, to help his breathing and speech.....

Celebrating the 4th of July, Kassian-style

On july 4th Olivia turned 7. We had a great day that day. I managed to get the day off at the last minute, which rarely happens, and we all celebrated the 4th and Olivia's birthday by going to the Dade County Sparklebration. I don't know if it was supposed to be like a county fair, or just a small 4th celebration, in any event we enjoyed ourselves after the initial shock of rain and lack of entertainment. That is, of course, until we found the LIVE entertainment on stage all day! What a pleasant surprise. We saw the Larkins performance 2 or 3 times throughout the day. We saw the clogger dancers perform, we saw a live statue of liberty, sky divers presenting the american flag, some random performers on stage (some children, some adults) singing songs we all recognized.



The kids REALLY wanted to go on the 'rides' there, but the carnival was extremely lame and the equipment looked older than me and not very safe, so Warren and I distracted them with food and the live entertainment!

We went blueberry picking!

We went blueberry picking today, we got about 9 # and paid about $28 - but the experience was awesome, the kids enjoyed it and the blueberries are excellent!

Photo of my Kids from 2006

This photo was taken during a visit with my folks when they came to Florida in April/May 2006. My parents were taking care of Flat Stanley. ;) As you can see from the photo, my parents brought their RV - so this was taken in the RV.

Aren't my kids adorable? ;)

What? Fish with the heads on?

Ok, so my 6 year old daughter has been asking for WEEKS to have fish for supper, but not just any fish. This fish we prepare has to be WHOLE, with the head and EYES....... ok, so she knows she won't be eating the head or eyes, just has to be there.

Can you imagine? Doesn't she look happy to have her little wish fulfilled? If I remember correctly, my husband said this was red snapper. It tasted good, we had to be careful of the few bones that were left, but she did well.

Don't you just love happy endings?